Tag Archives: ACR

I have been using the new Nikkor AF-s 85mm f/1.4G lens, arrived yesterday. I have produced both raw and JPEG profiles for the lens on the D3X – these can also be used on the D3, D3S and D700 (profiles tend to be fairly portable between bodies, if done on the highest resolution option).

Submitted to Adobe. This profile was made at 4m distance, and maps the lens at f/1.4, f/2.8, f/5.6 and f/11.

Very little correction is applied as the lens is already very good, but there is a small adjustment to distortion and vignetting, and some cleaning up of visible CA. It is still a good idea to enable de-fringe as well.

I’m not going to bore you with countless 100% clips. Just open this one file. It is a 100% screen shot of a tiled view of the same raw file from a Canon EOS 550D (aka Rebel T2i), taken at ISO 6400.

On the left, you see what Adobe Camera Raw 5.6 does with this file using no sharpening, 25 Luminance NR, 50 colour NR. On the right, you see what LR 3 Beta 2 does using the same settings (LR noise reduction has some further options – these are not adjusted).

When exporting the LR image to Photoshop, a dialog box appears saying you may need to install Adobe Camera Raw version 5.7! At the time of writing, version 5.7 is not yet available. But LR3 Beta 2 knows it exists… I used LR Rendering for this sample.

The 12,800 shot is by no means bad either. You could compare it with ISO 1600 shots from the first 10 megapixel CCDs.

Trust me, the LR 3 Beta2 result is superior both to the Canon in-camera JPEG and the Canon DPP processed result. Had I the time I’d post examples of every ISO from 100 to 12,800 and you would see something very special – the increase in size of ‘grain’ with each speed step, but nothing more. NOTHING more than a proprotional increase in grain size, just like film used to be.

No oatmeal. No porridge. No hot pixels, no smeary watercolours. No colour blurring and luminance smoothing. Just neat, tight, virginal grain. Hmm. I should not have said that. Even so…

And another things – it works on everything. It works on old files, new files. RAW files from before the Ark got stuck on Ararat. Night shots taken when night shots could only make 7 x 5 inch prints. Nikon, Canon, Sony, old Minolta, Pentax, Olympus – download this beta, and you just discovered great pictures in the stuff you thought was rubbish because you accidentally used ISO 800 when that meant shaking the pepperpot over your soup!

Tip: to use Lightroom use a front end, just set Photoshop as your editor, and after adjusting the pic hit Command-E – same as hitting the Open button in Adobe Camera Raw. Go straight to Photoshop, Do Not Pass Go, and do not (yet!) spend £200!

Adobe has released its Photoshop Camera Raw 5.4 Release Candidate, available immediately as a free download from Adobe Labs at http://labs.adobe.com. The “release candidate” label indicates that this update is well tested but would benefit from additional community testing before it is distributed automatically to all customers.

Like this:

Adobe has released Photoshop Lightroom 2.3 and Camera Raw 5.3, available immediately for download at www.adobe.com/downloads/updates/. The Lightroom 2.3 and Camera Raw 5.3 updates, originally posted as release candidates for community testing on Jan. 23, provide raw file support for the newly-released Nikon D3X and Olympus E-30 cameras.

The Lightroom 2.3 update also provides support for eight additional languages including Dutch, Italian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish, Swedish, Korean, Chinese (simplified) and Chinese (traditional). Additionally, it addresses several issues including a solution to a memory leak that affected some customers of the Lightroom 2.2 release.

Lightroom has received tremendous support from the photography community, and companies have released plug-ins that further extend Lightroom 2’s capabilities. Today, Nik software announced that its Viveza plug-in for colour refinement and light control is now compatible with Lightroom 2, and Photomatix recently updated its Lightroom HDR plug-in to work smoothly with Lightroom 2. To discover more plug-ins compatible with Lightroom 2 visit the Lightroom Exchange home page: http://www.adobe.com.

Pricing and Availability

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.3 update is available as a free download for existing Lightroom 2 customers and the Photoshop Camera Raw 5.3 plug-in is available as a free download for existing customers of Photoshop CS4, Photoshop Elements 7, Premiere Elements 7 and Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac. Both updates can be downloaded at www.adobe.com/downloads/updates/.

The camera raw functionality in the Adobe Photoshop software, including Photoshop Lightroom, Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop Elements, provides fast and easy access to the latest raw image formats produced by many leading professional and midrange digital cameras. Working with these digital negatives allows greater artistic control and flexibility while still maintaining the original raw files. Photoshop Lightroom and the Camera Raw plug-in also support the same functionality for TIFF and JPEG files.

The Adobe Camera Raw 4.4 plug-in is available with the purchase of Photoshop CS3 and as a free download for users of Photoshop CS3 Photoshop Elements 6 and Premiere Elements 4 by going to the Adobe Web site at www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html.